Pencils.

The gate way to literacy is what people use to help them write and comprehend the things they read and write. Writing is a technology because its how we share our knowledge and ideas with others, and past it on to the next generation. Yes, a pencil is a piece of technology because it is also a way people can share and pass on knowledge and ideas with others. Plato dislikes the written word because he thought it would weaken our memories. Writing allows us to communicate in ways that speech doesn't allow, but it lacks tonal cues that speaking has. Thoreau connects to pencil technology because he was a pencil designer who sought to improve the process by developing a cutting-edge manufacturing technology. The telephone helped shape communication technology because it showed us the pattern of it. The telephone also combined both speaking and writing situations. Baron's conclusion is trying to say that every piece of technology that has came to life was once not excepted or considered bad, but after they have eventually been excepted they changed the way we do things. This article defines literacy as having sufficient control technology to be able to use it to help them read and write in new ways.

Writing in the 21st century.

The three challenges/opportunities of writing in the 21st are developing new models of composing, designing a new curriculum supporting those models, and creating new pedagogies enacting that curriculum. Yancey explain writing as a technology that exists "in spite of" cultures that devalued wirting and of prohibitions against it. No matter what suppressed us we found a way to write. The kinds of challenges that writing has faced in history is the suppression of females and people of color. Yancey's main argument is that composing is a social practice and that we need to help students become citizen composers instead of good test takers. Writing hasn't gotten as much cultural respect as reading because through reading, society could control its citizens, whereas through writing, citizens might exercise their own control. Reading produces the feeling of intimacy and warmth. Some negative associations people make with writing is that it reminds them of pain or isolation.
Process writing is the process or invention, drafting, peer review, reflection, revising and rewriting, and publishing. Self-sponsered writing is a writing that belongs to the writer, not to an institution. This article "Writing in the 21st Century" defines literacy as the ability to compose on through social media, e-mail, or other electronic ways, and also knowing who your audience is and taking action. 

The Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

The main argument of the text "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy" is about how social media websites like Facebook can allow us to carry on more relationships with people. It can also help us increase our "Dunbar number". The ties that social media can make are in between weak and strong ties. Mark Zuckerberg introduced the news feed to modernize Facebook, so that people could easily see the changes in their friend’s page. Adding a news feed cuts down the amount of time a person would waste examining each friend's page, checking if anything had changed or been updated. Before the news feed users had the ability to spend more time searching for information of Facebook, after the news feed it gave the user no reason to spend extra time looking for information, it was just there. The article refers to "ambient awareness" as very similar to being able to pick up on someone’s moods through body language. "Ambient awareness" can cause us to communicate with people in real life because you feel like you know everything that’s going on from social media. According to Thompson people in their 20's feel pressured to stay connected on Facebook because the majority of their age group is on their and they have to monitor what people tag them in and say about them. This article defines literacy as the ability to use social media in the right ways.

The article "Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus" by Clay Shirky is about cognitive surplus and how its better to do something than to do nothing. The main arguments that Shirky is making are that when war world II came around people had to start managing their free time. The act or process of knowing, preserving, and remembering was seen as an asset rather than a crisis. The author argues that this surplus or free time people have could be spent in better ways then watching TV, it could be used to share information on the computer through websites like wikipedia. This article defines literacy as the  ability to use the Internet to spread information, but to also be able to dig deep in to things and not just take it for face value. Shirky says that this is something society grows into not out of. This definition is somewhat like the other articles we read. Shirky repeats the words free time and cognitive surplus in his article a lot which shows me that the two words probably have a lot to do with each other.

Is Google making us stupid?

The article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" if about how the ability for people has changed since the internet. The author talks about how he used to spend hours reading long books and passages, but now his concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. The article also talks about how the internet is changing how we think. Since the internet is a big part of the world now a days, and many people use it everyday, it shapes how we read and think. Literacy in this article is defined as the ability to read and comprehend what your reading, instead of taking it at face value. This definition is very similar to the definition of "Socrate's nightmare". This article says that the internet is causing people to read less and lose focus when reading. The author uses a few people, their blogs, and research to back his claims including Scott Karp's and Bruce Friedman's blogs and a study of online habits, conducted by scholars from University College London. Some of this evidence is effective but some are not since they could be considered opinions and not facts.

Social Media Account

After doing a lot of looking around and narrowing down my choices, I think I found a social media account to do my unit 3 essay on. Miranda Lambert who is a country singer and is also married to Blake Shelton. Miranda Lambert's Facebook page is filled with recent updates, photos and interactions. She has many photos at an animal shelter and many links for adoptable dogs. This shows that she loves animals and wants to help them. Miranda likes to put post on her Facebook about the cities she is visiting for her tours. This could just mean that she's a rock star or that she also likes to travel. Her biography on Facebook also gives you a great sense of what she's like. Overall I think/hope her account will be good for this unit.

Nothing goes away...

On Facebook I present myself as a college student. I have many pictures of the football games and the places around campus. I also talk about the stress I'm under. I think I also present my self as a family person. I have tons of pictures of my family and me. My cover photo is of two elephants, one is big and one is a baby holding its moms tail with its trunk. I think this say that I am an animal/nature person, which is pretty accurate. My more recent pictures before coming to college consist of my family and I. Both my dad and brother are in their uniforms. I think this represents someone who is patriotic and diverse. I also have a few pictures of me kissing a stingray in the Grand Caymans. This represents a person who is adventurous. I have a lot of posts about Auburn, which represents a huge amount school sprit. I think I portray my self very accurately on Facebook. I don't feel like I have a responsibility to maintain a social media presence. I do feel that I need to censor sometimes because I do have family on Facebook as well and if I have a future employer look at it, I don't want to be judged by the words I use to express myself, but it's not going to kill me to censor myself because it makes me a better person. If my future employer handed me a print out of my most recent Facebook post I would most definitely still get the job. I don't put anything on the Internet I wouldn't want my parents or grandparents to see. Its not just for employers its for me too, because no matter what you post or delete, it's never going to go away. It's better to be safe than sorry.

"I believe I can fly"

In the music video of  “I believe I can fly”, R Kelly is singing in a few different scenes. He starts of in a wide-open cornfield and then moves into a big forest. These scenes highlight on the gigantic amount of space between the earth and the sky. R Kelly uses the scenes in his music video to show the everlasting possibilities of the things he could do. The beat of the song is very constant and persistent showing the qualities you need in order to achieve one’s goals. In R Kelly's lyrics he repeats "If I can see it, then I can do it. If I just believe it, there's nothing to it" a few times which tells everyone that this is a very important part of the song. This part of this song, like the rest, is inspirational, letting all the people who listen to it that they could do whatever they set their mind to as long as they believe in them selves.

"The Great Gatsby" soundtrack

“The Great Gatsby” soundtrack was an amazing twist of jazz from the 1920’s and more modern music from 2013. They used a blend of both of these because back in the 1920’s jazz was considered a racy kind of music and they wanted to mirror this with the now a days racy kind of music. “The Great Gatsby” used the old jazz music from 1922 to inspire the music in the movie. They wanted their music to be unique and even help tell the story that was happening in the movie.

Some songs like “young and beautiful” by Lana Del Rey portrayed what the character where feeling in that scene. Some of the music helped actually set the scenes. The song “A little party never killed nobody” by Fergie presented a playful, upbeat rhythm that was perfect for one of the many party scenes.

I think the music was a perfect rhetorical choice for the movie it added a rebellious feel to it and even made it more relatable with the modernists of the music. The feel of “The Great Gatsby” was risqué and gangster-esque , but with a hit of lust and deceit. Which was strengthened by the songs that paralleled the scene.

"discover what you want to say"

My invention and arrangement process was pretty good considering it was the first time I had used it with analyzing an advertisement. The invention took some time and many steps to come out with the right arrangement. At first I just typed all of my ideas out and then eventually set it into an order where it flowed and made sense. I went back over and over again adding and expanding to my paragraphs and their ideas. Once I got to my third draft I was at a roadblock where I didn’t know what else I could add or do to make it better. That’s where the peer workshop came in handy.

I got a lot of good feed back from the people in my group that really helped and reassured me. This way of writing didn’t just help me but also my writing. I learned ways I could elaborate without repeating myself over and over. It also helped me understand things and explain them better. Having a timeline of drafts and workshops also helped.

I don’t procrastinate things until the day before they are due, but the required drafts helped me stay on top of my essay. If we didn’t have mandatory drafts, blog post, or workshops I probably would of started the essay the day we got it but then wouldn’t pick it back up until the week before it was due. The mandatory drafts and workshops defiantly made my essay better than it would have been if I had started it a week before.

At first I was really scared but at the end I really liked the way we did things in the unit one essay. All the mandatory drafts and workshops showed me I wasn’t writing this essay alone and there was others probably going threw the same struggles.

crossfire

One of the first things I noticed when I was watching the cross fire clip with Jon Stewart is that the guy in the bow tie was very bias toward what he thought. He thought that everything he believed in was correct, that only his opinion could be right. But why invite someone to your show to just yell and argue with them? Whats the point of that? I also noticed that he kept contradicting himself. He told Jon Stewart that he liked him as a person, but then would say things that implied otherwise.  By doing these things the "bow tie guy" shows ignorance. I think this stuff matters because crossfire is supposed to be a show of exploring peoples opinion and thoughts, and then considering and thinking about them, to understand all views so that one can come up with their own enlightened view. Jon Stewart stayed calm  and collective, he didn't seem to argue with his emotions. He was logical and even made some jokes, which was important because none of the other guys were. This crossfire clip shows us that when you know what you are talking about you say things in a whole different way. I mean why would you need to yell and criticize some one to get your point across.

Writing habits

Writing has always been a little harder for me; therefore I start immediately on an essay. Sometimes I will sit there just staring at a blank piece of paper debating on which angle I should come from. For the weirdest reason when I write it is hard to get anything longer than two pages. I feel like I address all of my questions, ideas, and other things, but I'm not good at the "fluff".  I start my process by just jotting down a few broad ideas and maybe some more detailed ones, so I don't forget them. Then I start just writing or typing. I have always done my best work in front of the television; the background noise helps me and can even spark other ideas or questions on occasions. I do my worst work when there are other people around talking. I think this happens because I get more involved in other peoples conversations then the ones on TV, especially when it is my friends. When it comes to making sure my rough draft sounds right and makes since, I have always relied on my dad and others peers. When I write something I look at it differently then everyone else, because it is a personal thing I have created, so I think its always good to get an outside view on things. After tweaking things around to make it flow, I do one last edit and have someone read it threw one last time. And finally I turn it in and hope for a good grade.